Donald Trump is a big supporter of gun rights. The Donald has made that clear in the days since the mass shooting at a community college in Oregon.
"I can make the case that if there were guns in that room other than the shooter's, fewer people would have died. Fewer people would have been so horribly injured," Trump said on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday.
"It was a gun-free zone," Trump said earlier at a campaign event in Franklin, Tennessee. "Let me tell you, if you had a couple teachers with guns in that room, you would have been a hell of a lot better off."
"In fact, I have a license to carry in New York, can you believe that? Nobody knows that," he added.
The Donald's sudden and loud embrace of the Second Amendment might come as a surprise to people who followed his first flirtation with running for the presidency in 2000 as a member of the Reform Party. Then The Donald, ever the populist, said while he generally opposed gun control, he slammed Republicans for not wanting registrations on guns and said he wished nobody had guns. Similarly, Trump said he supported longer background checks and the ban on assault weapons.
"It's often argued that the American murder rate is high because guns are more available here than in other countries," Trump wrote in his book, The America We Deserve. "After a tragedy like the massacre at Columbine High School, anyone could feel that it is too easy for Americans to get their hands on weapons. But nobody has a good solution."
"This is another issue where you see the extremes of the two existing major parties. Democrats want to confiscate all guns, which is a dumb idea because only the law-abiding citizens would turn in their guns and the bad guys would be the only ones left armed," continued Trump. "The Republicans walk the NRA line and refuse even limited restrictions. I generally oppose gun control, but I support the ban on assault weapons and I also support a slightly longer waiting period to purchase a gun. With today's internet technology we should be able to tell within 72 hours if a potential gun owner has a record."
In an interview with Larry King on CNN, Trump again came out in favor of restrictions and adding of guns "nothing I like better than nobody has them." Trump did say, however, people had a right to own guns.
Read the exchange with CNN's Larry King on gun control:
KING: Gun control.
TRUMP: If you could take the guns away from the bad guys, and there are plenty of them out there, I'm all for it, but you can't. Now, if you had a law that says no guns, the people that are law abiding are going to go by that law, but the bad guys aren't, so they're going to have all the guns and the good guys aren't. It's very simple.
KING: But the countries that has that don't have gun killings.
TRUMP: Well, the countries that have it don't have as many bad guys as us, OK? The fact is...
KING: We have more bad guys than other?
TRUMP: I'll tell you what, you take a look. I mean, what we have now with guns is not that I'm a big fan at all.
KING: You agree with the NRA?
TRUMP: I don't agree entirely, but I do agree that you should have the power to have a weapon, because other people do and other people are not necessarily...
KING: Would you favor...
TRUMP: ... the nicest people in the world.
KING: ... long checks and how people get the guns? You don't favor easy access?
TRUMP: Yes, yes, no, I favor -- I favor you have to go through a process, but the fact is that the bad ones already have one, and they're not going to go through a process either; they're not going to go through any process.
Look, there's nothing I like better than nobody has them, but that's not going to happen, Larry. So, as long as that's not going to happen, I say you have to be allowed to have a gun.